I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University where I work with the Technology Policy Program. I cover technology, media, Internet, and free speech policy issues with a particular focus in online child safety and digital privacy policy issues.
I have spent two decades in the public policy research community. I previously served as the President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation, the Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, a Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation as a Fellow in Economic Policy, and a researcher at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
I am the author or editor of seven books on diverse topics such as media regulation and child safety issues, mass media regulation, Internet governance and jurisdiction, intellectual property, regulation of network industries, and the role of federalism within high-technology markets. I earned a B.A. in journalism and political science at Indiana University, and received a M.A. in international business management and trade theory at the University of Maryland.
I also blog regularly at the Technology Liberation Front (http://techliberation.com) and can be found on Twitter at: @AdamThierer

Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last?

Just five years ago, “BlackBerry” was virtually synonymous with “smartphones.” It was well on its way to becoming a generic trademark, like Kleenex or Band-Aid, that would seemingly forever be associated with its entire sector. “For many, the Blackberry is a must-have gadget, a wireless hand-held computer that can send e-mail and make phone calls,” noted a 2005 NPR story on the “CrackBerry,” as some BlackBerry addicts referred to the device. (Incidentally, the story compared the BlackBerry to the Palm Treo, an equally popular device at the time.)

As a New York Times headline from earlier this year noted, “The BlackBerry [is] Trying to Avoid the Hall of Fallen Giants,” joining the infamous ranks of the SonySony Walkman, the Palm Pilot, the Atari 2600 gaming console, and the Polaroid instant camera. The article noted that “Over the last year, RIM’s share price has plunged 75 percent. The company once commanded more than half of the American smartphone market. Today it has 10 percent.” Both metrics continue their downhill slide.

If RIM can’t pull a rabbit out of the hat, the BlackBerry will become the latest case study exemplifying just how fast “information empires” can rise and fall in today’s rapidly evolving information technology marketplace. I’ve devoted numerousinstallments of this column to documenting how Joseph Schumpeter’s “perennial gales of creative destruction” are blowing harder than ever in today’s tech economy and laying waste to those who don’t innovate fast enough.

Nowhere is that more true than in the mobile phone handset and operating system marketplace, which has undergone continuous change over the past 15 years and is still evolving rapidly. Like the BlackBerry, Palm smartphones were also wildly popular for a brief time and brought many innovations to the marketplace, but the company underwent many ownership and management changes and rapidly faded from the scene. After buying Palm in 2010, HP announced it would use its webOS platform in a variety of new products. That effort failed, however, and HP instead announced it would transition webOS to an open source software development mode.

Microsoft also had a huge lead in licensing its Windows Mobile OS to high-end smartphone handset makers until AppleApple and Android disrupted its business. It’s hard to believe now, but just a few years ago the idea of Apple or GoogleGoogle being serious contenders in the smartphone business was greeted with derision, even scorn. Consider some of the pessimistic predictions that preceded Apple’s entry into the smartphone business:

In December 2006, Palm CEO Ed Colligan summarily dismissed the idea that a traditional personal computing company could compete in the smartphone business. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

In January 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed off the prospect of an expensive smartphone without a keyboard having a chance in the marketplace as follows: “Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine.”

In March 2007, computing industry pundit John C. Dvorak argued that “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone” since “There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.” Dvorak believed the mobile handset business was already locked up by the era’s major players. “This is not an emerging business. In fact it’s gone so far that it’s in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.”

This serves as a classic example of those with a static snapshot mentality disregarding the potential for new entry and technological disruption. Today, less than five years after these predictions were made, Nokia’s profits and market share have plummeted and a struggling Motorola was purchased by Google last summer. Meanwhile, Palm appears dead and Microsoft is struggling to win back all the market share it has lost to Apple and Google in this arena.

“The violence with which new platforms have displaced incumbent mobile vendor fortunes continues to surprise,” says wireless industry analyst Horace Dediu. He notes that Nokia’s Symbian platform went from 47% share to 16% in three years, Microsoft’s phone platforms went from 12% to 1%, RIM’s went from 17% to 12%, and other platforms went from 21% to zero. Meanwhile, over a two year period, Google’s Android OS went from zero to 48% and Apple’s iOS went from 2% to 19%.

In a marketplace this dynamic it’s worth asking: How long will it be before Apple and Google’s Android meet a similar fate? That question sounds ludicrous now considering their respective fortunes and current co-Kings of the Hill status. But posing the same question about BlackBerry just a few years ago would have also evoked howls of laughter.

No one is laughing now, however, especially not RIM execs or their shareholders.

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That is the type of closed minded thinking this article is questioning. As stated in the article the wireless industry is a violent place. If RIM can evolve over a short period of time and stay ahead of the curve…sure they will stick around. But if they do not learn from recent history giants…they too will fall quickly.

Seriously? Are you trolling??? You cannot be serious, right? RIM has absolutely nothing to offer – and within the next 6 months, will be done – as in, “baked”, “finished”, “kaput”, or any other singular verbiage used for a company that is “NO LONGER”… I’m guessing you were “long on Palm” also?

No brand has ever been too big to fall apart. IBM didn’t go away only due to some fast tapdancing and coming to grips with a serious change in its role; without choosing to be similarly agile, RIM will, in fact, go away.